Original thoughts on public service reform

When Britain's biggest public sector union lays into David Cameron, you can be pretty sure he's doing something right.

So it was yesterday, when Unite attacked the Tory leader's radical plans for letting state employees form local co-operatives to run public services.

His proposals, complained the union, would mark a return to the 'unfettered world of laissez-faire' and mean disbanding national agreements on pay, conditions and pensions for teachers, health staff and council workers.

David Cameron's new scheme raises more questions than it answers

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But what's so wrong about that? The truth is that top-down management has been a disaster for our public services, often forcing dedicated professionals to act against their better judgment to meet box-ticking Whitehall targets.

So if Mr Cameron's plans do indeed free public employees from excessive meddling, while giving greater rewards to those who deliver the best services most efficiently, they should be warmly welcomed.

Admittedly, his scheme raises more questions than it answers - and a huge amount of consideration needs to be given to how exactly it would work.

At present, the Mail finds it hard to see how it will apply to primary schools, many of which seem to have difficulty in teaching, let alone running their affairs.

But it is evidence of exciting and original thinking, for which the Tories should be praised.

One caveat: wouldn't it be easier to put faith in Mr Cameron's commitment to devolving power from the centre if he stopped imposing his own candidates on unwilling local Conservative associations?

Goldman's tentacles

Goldman Sachs is deeply implicated in Greece's debt crisis

Brilliant, ruthless and cunning, the world's most profitable investment bank pulls off yet another feat of wizardry, hugely enriching its partners while leaving a trail of chaos for taxpayers to clear up.

Is it any surprise to discover that Goldman Sachs, the 'giant vampire squid' of the banking world, is deeply implicated in the debt crisis now ravaging Greece and destabilising the Eurozone?

Few laymen can begin to comprehend the exotic deals, involving currency swaps and derivatives, through which the bank helped the Greek government to disguise the horrendous scale of its debts.

All we know is that these were the same techniques that plunged the world into the sub-prime mortgages catastrophe.

This paper is not in favour of excessive regulation for the banks - or indeed windfall taxes on their vast profits and bonuses. That is even after we learned over the weekend that some 10,000 are in line for pay of more than £1million.

But the way things are going, it will soon be very hard to argue against such restraints.

BBC must grow up

The Mail has long argued that the overgrown metropolitan twenty-somethings who run the BBC seem interested only in pleasing their own kind.

Now even the corporation's governing body appears to concede that we may have a point.

In its five-yearly review of Radio 2, the BBC Trust notes with dismay that the station's share of listeners aged 15-34 has shot up by no less than 62 per cent, while the numbers aged 75 and over have been sliding since the turn of the century.

Is that any wonder, when Radio 2, whose whole purpose is to appeal to older audiences, increasingly caters for the same teenage tastes as Radio 1?

As the trust insists, the station must do far more to appeal to the over-65s. For what justification can there be for a public service broadcaster which so often seems to overlook the existence of the fastest-growing age-group in the country?